From the Vaults: Havok
I've been cartooning since I was a little kid, but I didn't really start scanning my work until the mid-00s. In fact, I rarely scanned my art even in college. I used to fill up notebook after notebook with sketches, but it never occurred to me that I could be sharing my work online!
Anyway, in early 2005, I decided to print out a portfolio. So I went to Kinko's and scanned eight of my favorite drawings. And this Havok sketch made the cut:
Havok is one of my favorite comic book characters. I love the themes at work with him, especially how he tends to struggle with unwanted power and responsibility. I'm a bit of a Havok fanatic, having followed the character from Uncanny X-Men to X-Factor to Mutant X back to Uncanny X-Men, and, soon, back to X-Factor!
Visually, few characters can hold a candle to his original design by Neal Adams. It's gorgeous in its simplicity and complexity, especially under the pencil of Jim Lee. I also like his 90s redesigns by Joe Quesada, Jeff Matsuda, and Tom Raney.
My visual rendition is a mix between Havok's classic look and Sunspot's silhouette form. Also, I decided to try out a more tactile representation of Havok's concentric circle plasma blasts (which, if you notice here, appear to be made of the same material as the bands on his head).
I wish I was the type of artist that could eloquently capture the negative image effect of his powers and the perfect overlapping circles of his blasts. But neither of those effects are in my bag of tricks, so instead you get this version!
Regardless, to this day I have a special place in my heart for this sketch, and that's why I've dredged it up... FROM THE VAULTS!!!
I have to say, this way of rendering his powers is reallllly cool.
I always liked how Havoc had way too much power to do anything small. If he was going to fire, things were going to blow up. A lot.
THX!
That's one of my favorite things about him too, like most of the time he's useless unless they need a big explosion. Kind of a cool predicament to work with in the stories.
Nowadays, I feel like writers spend a lot of time exploring his "not Cyclops" qualities, but I'd much rather read about him struggling with the bizarre gift/curse scenario of his powers.